Dear Parents: Stop Raising Weaklings
WHAT traits do we want our children to possess as they grow up?
In the last year we’ve heard so much about “how to talk to kids” about current events, though much of it has consisted of projecting our own fears about what’s going on in the world onto our heretofore blissfully innocent children. Much less focus is on providing our kids the tools to grow up to be the kind of people who can maintain composure and perseverance in the face of a changing society.
The basic question comes down to this: Do we want our children to “be happy” — that nebulous expression of doting — or do we want them to be resilient in the face of an anxiety-inducing world?
A Pew Research Center study from 2014 found that the trait the majority of American parents, 54 percent, wanted their kids to possess is “responsibility.” Second was hard work, followed by helping others and being well-mannered. Resilience isn’t mentioned — but then, 2014 already seems like a different era from now.
Those are all good traits to instill in your children. All parents want their kids to be happy, of course. All parents would prefer their kid be smart, motivated, kind. But what we’re missing in raising our children are the traits of perseverance. We aren’t focusing on making our kids well-adjusted individuals equipped to handle the problems that come their way.
The political insult of the moment is referring to your opponents as “snowflakes” — as in they melt when you bring that debate fire. But the original usage was on parenting boards referring to people who were a little too into their kid — their unique, one-of-a-kind, no-one-else-is-like-him snowflake. Parents who treated their kids like perfect snowflakes helicoptered over them, protected them from any negativity and taught the children to expect that their lives would be as unblemished as the driven snow.
The result has been people who are unable to handle daily life. Being able to survive in society is a skill, and it’s one we’re failing to teach our kids. By protecting them at all cost from anything bad and not teaching coping skills for when things don’t go their way, we’re raising a society of weaklings who take to their bed at the first sign of conflict.
Last week Tina Fey made an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” with her solution to the troubles in America. Buy a sheetcake with an American flag drawn in icing on top, stay inside and eat it. It’s comedy, of course, but it has a basis in some reality.
“Post election stress disorder” swept the nation after November. On the Psychology Today Web site, psychologist Jennifer Sweeton wrote that women were hardest hit. “Countless Americans are reporting feeling triggered, traumatized, on edge, anxious, sleepless, angry, hopeless, avoidant of connection, alone, and suddenly haunted by past traumas they believed they had buried,” Sweeton wrote.
This was Nov. 12, just four days after Trump won the presidency — and he hadn’t even taken office yet. Something had gone terribly wrong for these people if this was their reaction to their candidate losing an election.
On the far end of the maladjusted spectrum, we also, of course, don’t want our kids to grow up so disaffected that they take to the streets with tiki torches while shouting that some other ethnic group or religion will not “replace” them. Resilient, well-adjusted people don’t make up a boogeyman out to replace them or spend their days caring too deeply about statues.
We live in a time where ease of life continues to improve yet we fall apart when anything doesn’t go our way. The two are not unrelated. Life is more comfortable than ever yet we expect perfection of outcome that can never be achieved.
The fact is that contentious times are the rule, not the exception. Perseverance in the face of change is an important trait for kids to have. And it wouldn’t hurt for some grown-ups to work on developing it, either.